Daisy's Aunt

by E. F. Benson

"Daisy darling," said Aunt Jeannie, putting her arm round the girl's waist, "how are you? You must take my side. After having stuck for an hour on a perfectly flat road, is it unreasonable that I couple my forgiveness with a new car?—You shall have our ultimatum afterwards, Lord Lindfield. Daisy may make harder conditions than I, and if she does, I shall certainly adopt them. Now, do look bored pretty soon, and come out of the dining-room quickly. It is barbarous this separation of the sexes after dinner. You don't stop behind after breakfast to drink tea."

The others had passed out, and Daisy and Mrs. Halton brought up a rather detached rearguard. The rest had gone straight out of the house into the verandah, where they had had tea, for the night was exquisitely soft and warm, and they followed them there.

"Ah! such a concert, Daisy," said Jeannie. "I wish you could have been there. And such a ludicrous drive as we had. It is so pleasant meeting Tom Lindfield again; we were great friends a year or two ago, and I think we are great friends still. But, my dear, our drive! We went for the first hour well inside the four-miles-an-hour limit, and eventually stuck on a perfectly flat road. Then the chauffeur chauffed for an hour or two, and after that we came along a shade above the fifty-miles-an-hour limit. Our limitations were our limits throughout. And such nonsense as we talked!"

"Oh, do tell me," said Daisy. "Nonsense is the only thing I care to hear about."

"I couldn't. I can't remember anything. I only know I laughed quite enormously and causelessly. Ah, here they all are.—Alice, what a divine place, and how it has grown up? Like Daisy. I was telling her about my ridiculous drive with Lord Lindfield."

Jeannie sat down in a big basket-chair and became suddenly silent. She felt queerly tired; she felt also rather sick at heart, and looking at Daisy, she could not bear the thought of the trouble and disquietude she must bring to the girl whom she so loved. She had saddled herself with a load that already galled her, though she had barely taken it up, and even as she spoke of her ludicrous drive there came to her mind an aspect of it, namely, the purpose for which she had driven down with him, which was not ludicrous at all.

And here, in this starlit garden, with friends on all sides of her, it seemed an incredible thing that she had got to sow suspicion and discord. Trouble and sorrow seemed so remote, so utterly alien. Security and serenity had here their proper home; it was a place of pleasantness and friends and rest. She felt much inclined to yield to its influences, to put off the execution of her scheme, saying to herself that it was wiser to think over it again, and see if there was not, as surely there must be, some other possibility of detaching Daisy from the man whom it seemed certain she would otherwise marry, and whom it was quite impossible she should marry. Even now Daisy was standing near her, trusting her so implicitly, loving her so well. That love and trust, so intensely dear to her, she had to risk disturbing; indeed, it was scarcely a risk she ran, it was a certainty she courted.

However quietly and well she did her part it was impossible that Daisy should not see that she was encouraging Tom Lindfield, was using a woman's power of attraction to draw him towards her. True, Daisy had not as yet told her that she expected to marry him; officially, as far as Daisy was concerned, she herself was ignorant of that. But supposing Daisy confided in her? There was nothing more likely. Within the next four-and-twenty hours Daisy would quite certainly see that her aunt was very intimate with Lord Lindfield. That very intimacy would encourage Daisy to tell her. Or, on the other hand, Lord Lindfield, while still thinking that she was only a very pleasant, sympathetic woman, might tell her his hopes with regard to Daisy. That was a very possible stage in the process of his detachment.

Yet she knew that personally she could make no better plan than that which she had already begun to carry out. She had thought over it, and thought over it, and one consideration remained paramount, namely, that Daisy must never know why this marriage was so unthinkably impossible. If he proposed to her, it seemed certain that she would accept him. In that case she would have to be told. Clearly, then, his proposal must be averted. She could find no other plan to avert that than the one she was pursuing, and already, partly to her relief, partly to an added sense of the meanness of her own rôle, she believed that his detachment would not be so difficult to manage. He had responded very quickly and readily to her advances; he had come to the concert with her and was delighted to miss the train, having told her also that he had "thought" of going down early to Bray. He had said no more than that, and she had quite legitimately laughed at the idea of his spending the day alone with two girls, had professed herself as pleased to have upset so preposterous an arrangement. Yet this, too, though she was glad to have stopped it, added to her heart-sickness. He would not have made such an arrangement unless Daisy had allowed it. And if Daisy permitted him to come down to spend the day with her and Gladys, it surely implied that Daisy wanted very much to see him. But Lady Nottingham had told her that Daisy was not in love with him. That was still an anchor of consolation.

All this was no effort of consecutive thought which required to be reasoned out. It was all in front of her, spread out like a landscape, to be grasped in a moment. There was Victor, too....